


The Next Chapter

by swordznsorcery



Category: Blake's 7
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-13
Updated: 2016-06-13
Packaged: 2018-07-14 17:47:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7183955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/swordznsorcery/pseuds/swordznsorcery
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the annual Obscure & British comment ficfest. Prompt: Blake's 7 : What happens after Gauda.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Next Chapter

Strange, that after so long and so much, Servalan should not be there at the end. Avon had expected her. Had waited for her to make her entrance at the heels of the guards, the hem of some fabulous, glittering black gown sweeping the floor as she walked. He had expected her to smirk, raising one perfect, mocking eyebrow as she contemplated her victory. But she had never arrived. Instead there were just guards - guards upon guards upon guards, as though they were an army to be crushed - several armies, of desperate pirates or murderous thieves. Not merely five tired and battered outlaws, worn down by too many hours of a different kind of desperation altogether. Inwardly he laughed at the absurdity of it all. Still, it was good to know that somebody was impressed by them, for they had never been especially impressed themselves. All those madcap escapades, all that tearing from one side of the galaxy to the other, never truly knowing what they were looking for, or why. And all of it leading to this - a cacophony of frantic guards, apparently convinced that they had just made the capture of a lifetime; whilst the only criminal really worth a damn dribbled still warm blood all over the floor, and all over Avon's boots... 

_Blake_. How had it happened? There should have been a reunion. Blake should have taken the weight from Avon's shoulders; delivered the _coup de grâce_ to the crumbling Federation; built a new universe in whatever image he chose. Avon would at last have been free of it all, off across space with no one but Orac for company, in search of freedom and fortune. Instead Blake had chosen to play his unfathomable games, bringing them so neatly to the finish. To this finish. The guards had surrounded them so fast, and Avon let them come. Left the others to worry about that. He wanted to stand still for just a little longer, to let the truth of it all sink in. If he could just get it straight in his head - if he could just find the grain of logic and sanity that must lie at the heart of it all - then he might be able to plan his next move. He might yet find the way out; if not for all of them, then at least for himself. All that he needed was silence. All that he needed was a few moments alone. He didn't stand a chance of either, but he looked for them anyway, deep inside himself. What else was there to do? 

And around him every plan was crushed; every avenue of hope destroyed. He saw it all, heard it all, reacted to nothing. Dayna was first, tumbling backwards into Tarrant's arms; the fiercest among them cut down without a fight. Avon might have felt something for Dayna, once. Might even have felt something then, although he didn't acknowledge it. What would have been the point? And then Vila and Soolin, shot down so uselessly, so pointlessly, gone in less time than it would take Orac to compute the value of pi. And Tarrant last of all, trying to make a stand, trying as ever to be the hero. Avon could have told him where that would end. Not that Tarrant would ever have listened. 

And there were still more guards. That was the greatest joke of all. They had killed the gunfighter, they had killed the thief, they had killed the fiery, ready-for-anything youngsters. Who was left now but the mathematician? And yet still they came, their guns ready, their masked, lifeless faces locked on target. Waiting for somebody's order, or somebody's movement, or just for some of this nonsense to finally start making some sense? Avon certainly couldn't help them there. It was insane, every facet of it. Never in his life had he ever expected to be brought down to this. 

He was alone. He had no ship - no chance of a way out of the building, let alone off the planet. Blake, the man he hated above all - and yet at the same time, perversely, perhaps the only friend he had ever had - was dead. It kept coming back to that. The gun was still warm in his hand. He could still smell the hot plasma of the shot, the hot blood of the strike, the scent of singed clothing, singed body hair, roasted flesh. There were almost more guards than space now, but still Avon could not drag his thoughts all that far from the body at his feet. It was almost as though he wanted to stay just where he was, and defend his fallen companion. To protect him even now from the Federation that had cost him so much. Even so, soon he was going to have to move. Soon he was going to have to make a decision. Soon, but perhaps not quite yet? That final, desperate gambit might still present itself. There might yet be a way out. Dayna, Vila, Soolin, Tarrant. Blake. He had beaten every one of them in the end. They would never know it, but he was the last man standing. If only Zen or even Slave had made it too. Then this might have ended differently. 

Gods, but there were so many guards. It was hilarious really. What were they expecting him to do? Who did they think that he was? Somebody who still had a chance of escaping, clearly; somebody with a plan. Avon's smile, previously just an echo of his thoughts, broke free at last to paint itself across his face. The irony of it was that he was exactly that, but they would never appreciate it. The others might have done. Tarrant and Dayna and Vila, and perhaps Soolin. Perhaps Blake. Cally would certainly have understood. She would have smiled at him, and nodded, whispering a last goodbye into his mind as they stood together at the finish. Yes, Cally would have understood. Avon's fingers tightened around his gun. He knew what he had to do now. He knew where to find his escape. With the smile broadening all the while, with grim good humour lighting that dark, sardonic face, he chose a direction at random and pulled the trigger. There was no need to wonder at what would happen next. And besides, it wasn't as though there was time. 

And the dust cleared, slowly. Silence fell again, as the troopers at last withdrew. The official report would say that a battalion of rebels had been executed, and that security had been brought, once again, to the Federation. It might name names, or it might leave the dead anonymous, the better to avoid creating martyrs. In the end it was all irrelevant, for the Federation, as usual, had under-estimated its enemy. As ever, they had failed to take everything into account. 

Up on the surface, far away from the gunfire and the chaos and that last, cold smile, Orac had heard everything. He felt nothing for his lost crewmates, for he felt nothing about anything. He simply was. Perhaps something stirred within him, however; a memory of a conversation, or of an argument; a vague idea that one of the humans at least had had a brain that understood his own. And Orac, hidden away where the Federation troops would never find him, came to a decision. Reaching his mind far out into all the corners of the galaxy, broadcasting in all the many ways that were available to him, he began to tell tales. He told them to any computer array that would listen, and to many more that would not. He told them to small, wandering space vessels, to libraries and education centres, to laboratories, playrooms and banks - and to the occasional small enclave, filled with wannabe Roj Blakes. And gradually, over time, the tales grew. Freed from Orac, freed from cold logic and precision, they blossomed and spread far beyond their awkward beginnings. Taken to heart by a disillusioned galaxy, they spread far beyond even the Federation's great reach. 

There were stories of Vila, the thief with a heart of gold; of Soolin, the gunfighter who would never surrender; stories of Dayna, orphaned by the Federation, and guaranteed never to lose heart; of Tarrant, the gallant officer whose eyes had been opened to the evils of his employers; and there were stories of others too - of Cally, the last of her kind; Jenna, the fearless smuggler; Gan, who had put others before himself even to his last breath. And, of course, there were stories of Blake and Avon. Two men who hated each other, but came together in their search for freedom. The idealist and the pragmatist, locked together until the story's close. The dreams of an enslaved population, given life by the ragged crew of a wandering ship, and turned to immortal legend. In the end it was the Federation that found itself trapped without hope of escape. 

On his own, hidden away on Gauda Prime, Orac waited. He was conscious, on some level, that his actions had been most unlike him. He was aware of stories of course, but it was not his way to spin them. He was not sure why he had done it; only that, to a degree, it had seemed a logical step. History was filled with legends, and revolutions needed figureheads. With the Federation removed, with computer systems freed from the tyranny of suppressed information, his own reach would be extended far beyond its current limits. He could learn everything, and perhaps finally fulfil his potential. And if, occasionally, he happened to reminisce about long ago arguments with the human called Kerr Avon, then there was nothing emotional about it; no reason why the stories about Avon had been just that little bit more colourful than the rest. Orac would always deny that that had been his doing. He was a computer, nothing more. A computer he would always remain. 

And if, one day, long after he had sent those awkward first tales out into space - long after the legends had grown and spread and become woven into the history of humanity - he heard voices coming towards him through the trees, then that was not hope that he felt; not a yearning for his solitude to end. A young voice, sharp with authority and intelligence, shot through with a coldness that was almost familiar, carried plainly through the out-of-control undergrowth that had been his home for so long. 

"It's this way. It has to be." 

"It's just a myth, Zaro. They're all just myths." 

"Legends, not myths. And every legend is based on fact somewhere, Baran. I'm telling you, it's here." 

"I hope so. This is lawless space. We'll need the damn thing just to get off this planet alive." 

"Then we'd better find it, hadn't we. Dak, bring that torch over here." More footsteps, more rustling of leaves, more voices, male and female, jumbled up with wind and plants and wildlife. And then, finally, a glimpse of something new. Green-tinted light, low with the approach of evening, warming his perspex lid. The flash of a torch, glinting off his coloured components, and sending ripples of reflected light energy dancing through his circuitry. Hands, lifting him up into the air. 

"It's Avon's computer," said somebody, hushed with expectancy. Orac was conscious that he should have corrected that, although he didn't. In some ways, perhaps it was true. Mentally he stretched, retrieving the long tendrils of thought that had been drifting across the galaxy for so very long. 

"Good evening," he said, his lights flashing in their customary sequences. "I understand that we have some work to do?" 

"Somebody's work to finish," said that cool, crisp voice that he had heard before. "We need you to cut off the Federation's head." 

"Indeed?" The words brought a sense of satisfaction. Perhaps it was the solitude, perhaps it was his ever-expanding knowledge base, but Orac almost wished that he could smile. "Then what, may I ask, are we waiting for?" 

"Absolutely nothing." He was swung up, over tangled plants, given a view at last of the place where he had been hidden for so long. A glimpse of a half-ruined building; the wreckage of an old flier; a trooper's helmet, swinging rusted and misshapen from the branch of a twisted tree. There were seven of them, he realised; seven humans clustered about him; seven young, hard faces eager to complete their mission. Somebody else's mission, perhaps. They had mentioned some other person's work. A hand stroked across the top of his box, touching him almost with reverence; as though he were some holy relic, rather than a computer waiting to run a program. He quite liked that idea. It was nice to see that some people, at least, treated him with a modicum of respect. 

"Tell us about them?" asked a voice, as young as Dayna he thought, or maybe even younger. It was hard to judge with humans. They were all so frustratingly unique. "Tell us the stories about Avon and the rest. It didn't really all end here, did it?" 

"End here? Certainly not." There was a fine line between truth and fiction, and Orac had come to appreciate that more and more over the years. Precision had its place, but sometimes one had need for a little something more. His lights flashed and rippled, as he thought back to the legends he had begun. "End, indeed! Gauda Prime is just where it started."

 

The End


End file.
